Want to tank, but I have concerns

I have tanked in my last few mmorpgs, the latest being ESO.

I have just picked up FF XIV on PS4, I would love to tank, but have some concerns

Firstly PS4 ability bar, does this hinder tanks as they would need more than 16 abilities on call. (I doubt it but want to make sure)

Being new would lack of knowledge of boss encounters be too much of a hindrance? Should I go BRD until I learn the game?

Those are my two main concerns, I have questions on top of that but they are knowledge based. Like is WAR better than DRK. Best way to level and what crafting to focus on.

So any opinions or advise are welcome!

with PS4 you actually do have 24-36 buttons to use. holding L2 pulls the left 8 buttons and R2 pulls the right side 8. which all use the 4 directional buttons and the face buttons. which = 16. then you can go into character screen and add a simultaneous button press. like R2 then L2 will bring up a 3rd set of 8 buttons.

knowledge is not a huge hindrance. most of the fights in the dungeons are stand and attack with dodging. there are some fight you have to position the bosses. which can be explained by people if they are willing to.

tanks is what you want to choose on what you like. dark knight you will not be getting till you actually enter the expansion as you do need a lvl 50 class to get dark knight. so paladin or warrior for now.

crafters. you can be all of them. you choose what you find makes the most for you.

There should be no problems using the PS4 control for any class or role. It is a matter of preference whether you use a game controller or keyboard+mouse. They did some great UI design with the game. I would however still get a keyboard so you can type and chat with players.

As for dungeons and trials, most fights do not matter. You can get by with one or two wipes and learn the mechanics of most dungeons simply by playing normally.

You are advised to watch a video for extreme trials and raids though, as those are very mechanic heavy and a single mistake often means a wipe. This is considered "hardcore" content so that expectation is the same for all classes/roles and isn't anything specific to tanks.

I would level all 3 tanks to about 22 or 30 simply for the cross-class skills. Gladiator provides an essential ability for tank swapping at lv.22 while marauder gives some great overall utility. Give them a try and see which playstyle works best for you.

DRK is a well-rounded class and specializes in magic defense. PLD lags behind in DPS currently (but might improve with the patch on Nov 10) and specializes in physical defense. Warrior is the most versatile because it becomes tanky by increasing its maximum HP and is thus decent against both magic and physical damage.

If you want to tank seriously and can only level one tank to 60, level up Warrior. DRK is a close second and PLD a distant third. Most groups never turn down a Warrior.

To level, simply do the story quests, class quests, and hunting logs of your primary class. You can do guildhests and other stuff as well if those interest you or you need a change of pace. I would recommend running dungeons as each dungeon will build on previous mechanics they introduced earlier, and so regularly training in dungeons is a great to learn tanking and party mechanics for endgame.

You gain a 50% exp bonus on any enemy you kill when you're below lv.50, and this increases by another 50% if you're rested, and another 50% if you have a higher level class (e.g. lv.20 gladiator will level faster if you have a lv.21 marauder, etc). This is additive, so it's a 150% xp boost in total. This makes dungeons a very good source of exp for tanks below lv.50.

Tanks primarily use weapons and armor from blacksmith and armorer. Goldsmith is also great at endgame, albeit for reasons that may change with the meta. For raw materials, miner will provide you with most of the materials you need. That said, a crafter/gatherer is not necessary as leveling up pre-50 is very fast and quest rewards will keep your main class up to date.

The current meta is in an odd place right now. Tanks at lv.60 are encouraged to use crafted accessories and overmeld STR materia in them. You'll understand how this works as you level but this is very expensive as each accessory costs a minimum of 10 million gil to fully upgrade. A high level goldsmith can help reduce these costs by allowing you to craft your own accessories and farm the expensive STR materia you need. Now, this meta might change (as early as the next patch, which is about 3 months or less away), so consider that before sinking the time and gil needed to level up a crafter.

If you level any crafter, you will want to level all of them. They provide great synergy with their cross-class skills and you need all of them to at least 50 for the best crafting at lv.60.

I use an xbox360 controller on my PC and have levelled all jobs to 50+. I actually find it easier to use than standard mouse and keyboard because it's easier to hit a 4 instead of a 5 than it is to hit A instead of B. And yeah, there's more options available than you think.

One thing I've done is you can set up some hotbars to be accessible while wielded, and some to be accessible when unwielded, and then use RB (R1 on PS4 I think?) to swap between them. So, for my setup, hotbars 1 & 2 are only accessible when wielded and have all my in-combat abilities, while hotbars 3 & 4 are only accessible out of combat and have things I'd use then (protect, stoneskin, food, chocobo, etc.) This, combined with using the multi-press hotbar setting mentioned earlier, give you a vast amount of buttons that are quickly accessible.

Now, as far as being new, two things: First, you can always read up strategies for boss fights. There's plenty of online guides and videos. Second, a lot of people are rather accommodating if you just say that you're new to the dungeon.

I use a controller on my PC as well... I find keyboard hard to play with so I immediately picked up a controller for this game as soon as I knew I was going to stick with it. There are sixteen buttons immediately available but with the "extended crossbar" option you can have up to eight-sixteen more by easy button combos (with the shoulder triggers). You can also change which crossbar is showing by hitting the shoulder button (not too sure which PS button it is; I use an XBOX controller, I assume the setup is similar though). At first it was hard to switch on the fly but I've gotten very used to it.

Tanking I don't do much but I can guarantee a lack of knowledge won't hinder you. The first few dungeons/group content aren't too hard and you'll get a feel for the tanking. For harder things, you -can- read up on the encounters but personally I never did, though I do all new content as bard.

I say personally try out all the tanks if you are determined to, and see which one you like the best. Like others have said before you can't get DRK right away, but once it's available you can try it. Myself, I have PLD leveled since I like to tank for fun (and only with friends... random people not so much), and even then you'll want to level up Gladiator (the class Paladin is from) for the cross-class abilities.

And of course you can level any and all jobs, so if you find bard too boring or end up not like tanking you can just switch at the drop of a hat.

Have fun :)

Thank you for all of your responses, it has put my mind at ease.

Though on reflection, I really do not know the game. So I am going Bard, this will mean i can still give something to the groups or FC i join, but learn the game before diving into tanking.

Thanks again.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Banburybull

Thank you for all of your responses, it has put my mind at ease.

Though on reflection, I really do not know the game. So I am going Bard, this will mean i can still give something to the groups or FC i join, but learn the game before diving into tanking.

Thanks again.

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If you want to have a go at Tanking but want to get comfortable with a DPS then I recommend using a lance, it will give you experience abit more similar to tanking I.E doing your 1,2,3 Combos, beining close to enemies. That sort of thing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Martin_Arcainess

If you want to have a go at Tanking but want to get comfortable with a DPS then I recommend using a lance, it will give you experience abit more similar to tanking I.E doing your 1,2,3 Combos, beining close to enemies. That sort of thing.

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I second that. Lancer/dragoon I think is most similar to tanks in terms of ability use and melee requirement. Monk still has positionals and ninja mudras are very different.
Really you will want to level everything to some extent for cross-class skills, so try everything.

Here's a good piece of advice for managing your bars and making it less complicated.

There are a LOT of abilities. But there's also a handful you won't use as well as a good chunk of them that you only use on demand.

A good way to manage all of this is macros. You can macro some of your defensive/offensive abilities into one button.

You can macro things like mercy stroke (finisher ability) onto one of your regular abilities (since it is only used at -20%.

You can also activate the l2+r2 ability bars as others have said.

What I have done with them is change both l2+r2 and r2+l2 to display the same bar so that there's never any confusion.

Some may argue that this is inefficient but it greatly reduces the amount of micromanaging you have to do and I have cleared all raid content with this setup.

I would also recommend lancer prior to tanking if you want to take a DPS.

They have a hefty physical defense, must practice dodging and tanks such as warrior and dark knight play a LOT like lancer/dragoon does.

As mentioned, Lancer is the most tank-like of the DPS classes. But if you end up going with Warrior, you'll want Pugilist leveled for cross-class skills anyway, so that would be another reasonable choice. You could combine initially learning the dungeon mechanics with leveling your cross-class skills, then follow up with your main class.

(And there's nothing wrong with using Archer if you want to try something different. One of the nice things about this game is that you can try everything if you want. It just has less carryover to tanking than LNC or PUG.)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Banburybull

Thank you for all of your responses, it has put my mind at ease.

Though on reflection, I really do not know the game. So I am going Bard, this will mean i can still give something to the groups or FC i join, but learn the game before diving into tanking.

Thanks again.

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In case you ever want to give tanking a try, a friend of mine made a great low level tanking guide that's very easy to understand.
Should give you a pretty decent idea of what to do in dungeon situations so you can feel confident enough to go in as tank.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUP6MgI2RGA

Early boss encounters are pretty straightforward. Some of them are as simple as "kill adds before they get to the center". If you hit a point where you're having trouble, try a new class for awhile. That's what I did with WHM and BRD, then I went back.

I have decided after playing for this week, that tanking won't be too hard to pick up.

I have a follow up question, what is the best server for an EU PS4 player? I would like to raid 2-3 nights a week and will be going tank (war/DRK)

If your FC is interested in a tank in training I can be contacted @banburybull on twitter

I do not play on the Chaos/EU data center, but Zodiark was the server that was created on that Data Center when the PS4 version launched so it likely has a high number of PS4 players. I've heard that it does not have a very large endgame community, but that is internet hearsay so take it as you will.

Thank you,

I have test characters on Phoenix, Odin and Ragnarok. All good servers

I would prefer to level with people to talk to and be social with (not be boosted)

For the PS4 I'd recommend getting a cheap usb keyboard for when you play in the Duty Finder. I use one myself with the PS4 and it helps a lot with communication (my free company is mixed PC and PS4 players). Since the duty finder is cross-server chances of getting a full console user party are rare.

EDIT:
In the meantime making macros for phrases like "/p Hello!" , "/p This is my first time here." or "/p This is my first time tanking this instance." and "/p Thank you for the party." will be helpful. In leveling dungeons most people are fairly patient with new players so long as the identify themselves. Otherwise when the new player bonus message pops up they may just assume you are an alt and already know what to do.

Thanks I got a spare keyboard knocking around

But I will make some macros for party chat when I make some tank macros

For PS4 controller, you have plenty of buttons. There are 8 sets of cross hotbars total. Pressing R1 switches between them to the next one you have actions set to. I only use 2 sets for combat (32 buttons total) because if you use more than 2, you would have to press R1 twice sometimes to reach a specific set, which causes a bigger delay between your actions. But by only having 2 sets for combat, you only have to press R1 once to get to any of the 2 sets you need since you are only using 2. Each set has 16 slots. 8 on left side and 8 on right side. The 8 on each side is mapped to the d-pad and face buttons of controller. Holding L2 brings up the left 8, and holding R2 brings up the right 8.

I have sets 4 through 8 filled with out of combat stuff such as buttons to instantly change class with a single press of said button, and numerous main commands, a mount, some emotes, etc. I have character configurations settings set so that when my weapon/tool is drawn only the sets I have as my combat sets will display and are the only ones that can be cycled between. While weapon/tool is sheathed, only sets 4 through 8 are active, which are my out of battle actions. I use sets 3 and 4 as combat sets for PVP, and I would go into character config when I wanted to do PVP and check boxes 3 and 4 while unchecking 1 and 2.

Thanks for all who have posted, I am now late 40s and loving tanking.

Still on controller, but may look at macros or moving to keyboard when raiding.